Jochen Arbeit & Paolo Spaccamonti
Brood Ma
Lolina
Kate Carr
Gosheven
Flame 1
Sharon Gal
Grouper
RUI HO
Eva-Maria Houben
Kemialliset Ystävät
Potter Natalizia Zen
Severed+Said
Yikii
Brett Naucke
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Jochen Arbeit & Paolo Spaccamonti II
‘Only if you know symmetry you can break it. Only where the dark has reigned, you can escape. Places have sounds. CLN is the album by Jochen Arbeit and Paolo Spaccamonti. CLN place is the city of Turin exoteric center joint. With two fountains depicting Po and Dora Riparia rivers, in perspective symmetry, and two twin churches exactly behind them, in San Carlo place. Through the lines of the tracks, two guitars stare at each other, but instead of chasing each other, they take slight different directions. Like being close to a defined and straight rail path, but choosing rather to grow free close to it. In an apartment overlooking CLN place, the first homicide is committed in the horror movie Profondo Rosso by Dario Argento. A sentient woman is slaughtered by an axe. The dark force of the album is an elegy, reverberating on a rigorous architecture. In CLN place, tourists often point their finger, with an uncertain smile, seeking for the right window of that apartment. “Did it really happen there?”. The swollen blast of the guitars appears always consciously managed, like noise being taken by the hand and thrown elsewhere.’ — Maurizio Blatto
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Brood Ma TVR
‘Most interesting is how Brood Ma treats pastiche as an ideology. Before joining Tri Angle, the producer released music via the Untold-run Hemlock Recordings as well as Quantum Natives, a UK label/collective whose members embody the intersection of Internet provocation and underground rave culture. (The label’s website is an unofficial Google map showing an alien planet that recalls StarCraft and drone surveillance photography; its Soundcloud description: “a battle for survival in the nightmare undercity (in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war)”.) Like much of the artists released by his previous labels, this is music whose technocratic aesthetic is impossible to divorce from the listening process.’ — Nathan Reese
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Lolina The River
‘Lolina doesn’t give the impression that she especially wants to be understood. As one half of the experimental electronic duo Hype Williams and as a solo artist, the musician formerly known as Inga Copeland has resisted easily legible narratives at every turn. She’s said little about herself in the few interviews she’s given, and her music tends to confound most of the expectations a listener might bring to it. Her latest full-length release, The Smoke, centers Lolina’s singing voice more than her solo debut, Because I’m Worth It, but that doesn’t make it any easier to grasp. Where the human voice often asks listeners to identify with the person behind it, Lolina’s only deepens the sense of bewilderment that her music often provokes. Listening to The Smoke is like hearing a voice trying to locate itself in an unstable environment, rubbing up against strange synth textures, asymmetrical beats, and jagged melodic phrases.’ — Sasha Geffen
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Kate Carr Flicker, Flow
‘My creative practice is centred on articulating the relationship between people and place through sound. Drawing on field recording, experimental composition and sonic mapping my practice aims to examine the ways we shape and are shaped by the lived sonic realities of our natural and built worlds. Weaving together real and imaginary journeys, intensive explorations of sonic enclaves and re-deploying the scientific concept of transects to the realm of sound, my practice explores both human and natural geographies. I am particularly interested in processes of de-population, decay and renewal, lost sounds, music in public spaces and the role of the aural in storytelling and memory.’ — Kate Carr
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Gosheven Until Exhaustion
‘In a physical way. Music is based on physics – it’s the vibration of air. Over the centuries, we’ve gradually abandoned pure tuning. It was mainly because of the piano, actually – the seven white keys, and the five black keys. It’s also completely overused. When I hear piano, it’s really hard for me to get into it. So I mainly use pure tunings. But there are also some kind of hybrids, like La Monte Young’s tunings, or those of his disciple and tuning assistant Michael Harrison. He’s the only man ever to perform The Well-Tuned Piano apart from La Monte Young. He is also one of my favourites. You hear the weirdness of the tuning. I think it’s also because of this weirdness that people got interested in Leaper. It also draws from the American minimalist scene, which we forgot about a bit. I’m working on bringing it back somehow, but my approach is a bit different: for me, music is about dramaturgy, telling a story, like in a film. So I have to use chord progressions and I have to make everything happen within the limitations of a few minutes’ long tune. And it’s actually not a decision. It’s instinctive.’ — Gosheven
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Flame 1 Fog
‘Burial is half of a new duo called Flame 1. His partner in this enterprise is the Bug, the most prominent alias of the UK producer Kevin Martin. It’s an odd and fascinating combination. As the Bug, Martin makes spartan, warlike, adventurous music, drawing from grime and dancehall and various strain of experimental music. His most recent collaborations have been with Earth, the Pacific Northwest doom metal legends. Flame 1 should represent a big departure for everyone involved. Instead, it sounds like a natural combination. “Fog” is a dark, minimal piece of atmospheric electronic music, one that doesn’t exactly qualify as dance. It’s hard to say which parts of the song come from which producers, but in it, you can hear both the desolate sadness of burial and the dub-reggae intensity of the Bug.’ — Tom Breihan
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Sharon Gal Bloo
‘Sharon Gal is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, experimental vocalist and composer, with particular experience of free improvisation and collaborative group compositions. Her work relates to sound, architecture, live performance and participatory art, exploring the psychology of sound and its relationship with space.’ — Loose Lips
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Grouper Driving
‘Grid Of Points is a set of songs for piano and voice. I wrote these songs over a week and a half; they stopped abruptly when I was interrupted by a high fever. Though brief, it is complete. The intimacy and abbreviation of this music allude to an essence that the songs lyrics speak more directly of. The space left after matter has departed, a stage after the characters have gone, the hollow of some central column, missing.’ — Liz Harris
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RUI HO Becoming Is an Eventful Situation
‘Berlin-based Chinese producer RUI HO makes electronic music that bridges modern club influences with traditional Chinese sounds. Mixing the kind of high-def abstracted club music of the likes of Arca and Celestial Trax with Chinese traditional instrumentation, RUI HO creates a very distinctive, personal musical language (and in particular, skilled use of scouring distortion contrasted with elegant glossiness).’ — bandcamp daily
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Eva-Maria Houben Breath for Organ (Excerpt)
‘German-based Eva-Maria Houben creates vast, incorporeal forms from almost nothing – music that lingers long after the last note has dissipated. Both carefully nuanced and obsessively singular – her evocative solo piano works have a warmth and beauty to them that stands out beyond the occasionally bare and dry work of her contemporaries.’ — Name Less
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Kemialliset Ystävät Hengitä Sisään Ulos
‘Kemialliset Ystävät is a long running musical collective headed by Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén. The group’s rotating contributors include virtuosic musicians, sound artists, mad electronic music professors, field recorders, singers, amateurs and professionals. Leaving Records presents the project’s latest LP, entitled Siipi Empii (loosely translated from Finnish to A Wing Hesitates.) Anderzén explains, “The English translation unfortunately loses all the music and rhyme of the Finnish title but the meaning’s still there, kind of. The title is aiming to describe the movements of a butterfly and the weight/heat of the idea that every single flap of the wing can cause a storm/revolution.” He has described the group’s sound as sometimes “like an orchestra flying around in a tornado.” These themes embody Siipi Empii, a wildly weird dose of electronic folk music crafted through sheer force of nature, an abstract organism guided gently by Anderzén’s deft artistic touch.’ — LeavingRecords
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Potter Natalizia Zen Rhythm Did Not Change
‘After stranding listeners in deep space with Schleißen 4 in 2015, Potter, Natalizia and Zen regroup along the percussive vectors of Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out – three years in the making and taking cues from Kosmische, abstract EBM and obscure library sounds for seductive new horizons of pulsing rhythms and floating ambient dub tones. The trio control the mission with masterful skill and sleight of hand, prompting routes for the user rather than signposting the way with cliché. Of course, it’s hard to escape some sense of homage or reverence for the original forms, but they do so with such sensitivity to the material and “the journey” that the results simply transcends that heritage, to arrive somewhere, timelessly, out there.’ — 0AntN
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Severed+Said Digital Parasites
‘Severed+Said is John Touchton and he makes the most captivating electronic music. For the uninitiated John Carpenter is an obvious first reference, Touchton’s experimental electronic jams made with guitars, synthesisers and drum machines paint a familiar first impression but this rapidly fades with deeper immersion and repeat listens.’ — Blair Millen
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Yikii Kill Me
‘The Chinese musician Yikii ushers us in the nightmarish soundscapes soundtracked by enigmatic melodies, creepy and soothing at the same time. She lets us plunge into the clouds of distorted noises and then starts to sing; her ghostly voice carrying a hypnotic lullaby with a dark twist, lulling us deeper into sweet, sweet nightmares. This is a world of chaos and ominous sounds, a world where the past, present and future merge, where dripping waters wipe away your memories and the fragrant air suffocates you while snowflakes of the nuclear winter gently land onto your hair. You know that this is where you’re bound to spend the rest of eternity, a solitary existence in the land of no one, and you close your eyes with a calmly sorrowful smile, softly floating on the enchanted sonic waves.’ — Gabriela Holesova
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Brett Naucke Youth Organ
‘With his latest release, Chicago modular synthesist Brett Naucke has approached the melismatic aura of memory by attempting to rebuild his childhood home through sound. The Mansion gives and creaks with all the resonant texture of a building ravaged by time, its walls built from colorful synth patches and stabs of noise rather than brick and mortar. Naucke’s sounds are eerie and comforting in equal measure, painting a wistful picture of a place that seems to have become misshapen, transformed by both time and perception into something beyond this world. His most mesmerizing moments emerge when he seeks out pure bliss, as on the psychedelic standout “Youth Organ,” which pulses with a nostalgic sense of wonder; you can practically see Naucke twiddling with the knobs of his synthesizer with all the wide-eyed joy of a kid rifling through a toy box for the first time.’ — Sam Goldner
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Our ‘Kindertotenlieder’ has no relationship to the Mahler work other than coopting its title and being somewhat similarly but more dark. Is ‘Filmworker’ out, or I guess I mean streaming? It sounds pretty much like a real must, yeah. Thanks very much for the share. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I don’t have Spotify, but I like your song choices. Everyone, if you have Spotify, Mr. Erickson has made a playlist of his favorite psychedelic tracks (1966 – 1974) in honor of yesterday’s 4/20 thingeroony. Some good picks in there, if you ask me. And it’s not an entirely inappropriate much older sibling to the very gig I’m giving you this weekend. Anyway, spin it here. Yeah, makes senses about it being tougher for actors to play a different nationality. My actor friend Christian, who’s Welsh, does that 90% of the time, playing Americans enough of the time that he told me it’s second nature and that he basically feel like he has dual nationalities now. Record Store Day is a kind of middle deal here. It’s not a huge thing. Generally here a bunch of stores gather together at some hall and set up booths to sell the Record Store Day merch and some of their usual wares. I’ve gone a couple of times, and it was pretty blah. I’ve never seen any of them selling the actually exciting items. I don’t know much of the US stuff gets over here. Not much, I don’t think. So, no, it’s not. I forgot today was Record Store Day until you mentioned it, for instance. ** Jamie! Thank you, kind sir/Jamie! We’re not on strike yet. We put our heads together and decided to issue an ultimatum today and then either strike or not depending on whether that threat gets us paid in the next few days. Well, it’s a 55 scenes expectation for comedies, and our show is def. comedic, but it’s also strange and dramatic and basically a melange. But we’re under even the drama show expectation, which I think is 40 scenes. We just have to pre-sell the idea that the longer scenes will be shot, etc. in a lively, energised way that wil give them the effect of multiple mini-scenes and hope that flies. This weekend I have script work, of course. Zac and I are supposed to be photographed today for an upcoming Interview Magazine piece about PGL. I might go with Gisele to see this Krumping Battle tomorrow. On Monday Zac and I go to Torino for two days because PGL is in a film festival there, so I’ll prep and pack for that. All of that plus unanticipated this and that. The Glasgow International Art Festival sounds like big fun and more. Cool, man, and very cool that you’re feeling up enough to go. I hope you have the artsiest but not fartsiest weekend. World Premiere Love, Dennis. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha, cool: eyeballing the Edmier. When is the estimated arrival back from the printers date? That is ultra-exciting! ** Misanthrope, Well, gosh, thank you, man. I’m chuffed. Will do on the NYC arrival date. Shouldn’t be too long at all until I’m informed. Arranging a meet with y’all is a done deal albeit without specific coordinates yet. Hm, no, I don’t think I’ve ever actually looked at 4chan, which is strange. No, I’m pretty sure the ‘maybe hacked’ thing is brand new. I guess I’ll ask my host first. The movie version of ‘LTZ’ is super bad. ** Nik, Hi, N. Ha, I can imagine that. Yeah, I can also imagine the weirdness where you are because of the big move. I hope it ends up being the rich kind of melancholy for everyone involved. No, or sort of, as I told Jamie. We’re going to threaten a strike and see if that finally gets us paid rather immediately. If it doesn’t, we’ll do a total work stoppage until she pays us. Since her ass is on the line, I would assume that would finally work, but it’s insane that we’re having to go that far. The new gif book is finished. Kiddiepunk has it, and I think he’s putting the book together now. Last I heard, I think it’ll come sometime in May. Thanks for asking! Have the swellest weekend. ** Okay. I made you a gig. There’s a bunch of really good stuff in there if you’re willing to venture into it, which of course I hope you are. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
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Hi!
This whole shit your producer dares put you through makes me so angry. Instead of making it possible to give all your energy to the project (which would be in her best interest too, in the end), she keeps rolling obstacles in your way. Did you really need to go on a strike? This is infuriating!
God, I hope you liked Aquaria! I’m getting disgustingly obsessed, haha!
I’m glad your allergy went away! And the patisserie! God! I checked out the instagram page, thank you! It seems so divine! Even if everything’s very pricey, I don’t think I’d be able to resist either.
The festival was pretty good! I had fun, I just got really exhausted by the end of the day. It was busy but not overwhelming at every minute of every hour. I had the time to look around a little and at one booth, I came across this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forever-Butt-Taschen/dp/3836551578. I was floored, I’ve known about its existence but would’ve never expected to find it in Hungary. I spent all my food-money on it but it was worth it, I’m super happy! I’m going back tomorrow but only for a 4-hour shift from 10 to 2 so it’s gonna be okay. In the meantime, I’m just lazing around today. Going deeper still in my obsession and reading. And now listening to music too. Thank you for the gig! (And while I’m at it: I LOVED yesterday’s ‘Children’ post!!)
How’s your weekend? What’s happening?
Quite a compendium of outré treats!
“Filmworker” is opening theatricaly before the end of May.
I linked the Mahler because I love it so.
I did that playlist completely off the top of my head in less than 30 minutes, and in retrospect it amazes me that I forgot Can and the 13th Floor Elevators, as well as more mainstream artists like the Rolling Stones and Donovan, plus the entire British “acid folk” scene. But at the same time, I don’t want it to be any longer than it is right now. I might do a second playlist of my favorite psychedelic music that covers those gaps at some point, and I would write out the choices beforehand.
I already own Flame 1’s single, and I recognize many of these artists’ names from Tiny MixTapes and Bandcamp. Given the amount of money I dropped at Rough Trade yesterday, I can’t afford to do another deep dive into music purchasing right now.
Dennis, Okay, cool, things will meld into coherence and it’ll all be fun re: NYC. Great. The kids are really looking forward to it. (So funny to call a 23-year-old and an almost-18-year-old kids, no?)
I can only imagine what the film version of LTZ is like. I’ll try and find a copy and watch it, just for shits and giggles. Though I never saw it, I remember people I knew being all scandalized that a guy was “caught” giving another guy a blowjob for money. That’s how I remember my friends’ reactions at the time. Granted, I have much more “worldly” friends now who wouldn’t blink at such a thing. And of course, reading the book, it’s obviously full of sex and drugs and those sorts of things are pretty par for the course throughout. I can’t understand why my friends at the time were so scandalized.
Now, here’s two things that really make your early work and his different for me. 1. I think you’re just a better writer. Your sentences, both individually and how they’re put together, are just better and much more devastating. 2. This is going to sound weird. I find your work to be so much more…personal, if that makes sense, whereas I find his stuff to be more social satire without that personal-ness. Quite different. I can see where there were comparisons just based on the surface, but beyond that, the similarities end. Either way, I did like LTZ, and I’m sure I’m going to read more of his stuff. I’ve read AP, of course, which I also liked.
Btw, I never knew that your one actor friend was British until a rather short time ago. Always figured he was American, hahaha.
I’ll be finishing the sixth bit of my novel this weekend. And I’ll be starting to read Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. My niece liked it and thinks I will too.
I have to go to Crofton, MD this evening for a friend’s birthday get-together. Some taphouse or something that I’ve never been to. Should be okay.
For me, Gosheven is the real winner of this day. He combines so many different genres in ways I haven’t heard before. The song you selected resembles a remix of Terry Riley, and while the classical element is always present in his music, so is an equally strong influence from electronic dance music, as well as a touch of a pop sensibility. I also like Sharon Gal, Severed and Said and Kemialistet and Ystavat. Of course, I haven’t had time to listen to every artist whose music you posted yet.
The Denmark Vessey album, SUN GO NOVA, is really strange, and a lot less coherent or successful than the Buy Muy Drugs album. Basically, it’s two EPs that add up to exactly 30 minutes. The first half, produced by Earl Sweatshirt, consists of pretty good leftfield hip-hop. The second half, produced by Anderson.Paak collaborator Knwledge, is mostly instrumental and consists of brief fragments (only one song is longer than 2 minutes) that seem to be made entirely from samples, both instrumental and spoken word, with little rapping from Vessey. It’s intriguing, but not the next step from the Buy Muy Drugs album, which I thought was brilliant, I was hoping for.
Sorry to hear about the producer drama, Dennis. Certainly puts my little work dramas in perspective.
Many intriguing items in today’s gig. The Arbeit/Spaccamonti video is giving me ideas to improve an old piece, when I have time and headspace to work on something creative, haha.
Totally spaced it’s Record Store Day. I suppose I’ll make my usual pilgrimage to Amoeba tomorrow, and delay all the juicy mail order items I was planning to send for.
I’m kicking off a Cecil Taylor binge this weekend, in commemoration. Man, Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come still sounds so good.
Bill
And the Children yesterday, wow! I’m a big fan of the Conner and the Mueck (I thought you didn’t like Mueck so much?) The Li Wei I think I’ve seen somewhere; now I’ll be obsessed with trying to remember where/when. So much great stuff… that Bruno Wolpoth’s technique is so amazing (and the subject matter is ahem not bad either).
Bill
I’ll check out the gig at some point, but the “Children” post was very inspiring. Bookmarking it. Come to Phoenix! It’s a hellscape but the food is good. Related to the topic of children, one of the books I’m using is a cultural theory text called “The Queer Child.” Should be good.
I’m back. Anything you feel a Want to talk about and/or update on? if not, that’s totally cool, online interactions can be tiring on the wrong days. I just had the most emotionally intensive ten days of my life. We worked on a piece from the play Network which, yes, is from the Lumet movie. Tiring stuff. Came home tonight to go straight to my Leaves of Glass audition… which went well, it’s been suggested that I have the part unless something goes really well….
J
I know it’s self-serving to bring this up, but my 2017 short film THIS WEEK TONIGHT, which is a monologue from the POV of a cable TV news pundit who just got fired, constantly got NETWORK references from people who read the script or watched the movie. I have actually never seen NETWORK; when my monologue started getting compared to it, I thought “it’s dangerous for me to watch it till my film is finished,” and although that was last summer, I still haven’t gotten around to it. But given that connection, I’m interested that you’re working on a play based on NETWORK. Acting? Directing?
I just sprung for the Potter Natalizia Zen. Very into the motorik beat lately and the LP is available on clear vinyl so I’m looking forward to that when it arrives.
The Yuck ‘n Yum Compendium is now away with a printers called Lulu for the US leg of its launch. The British consignment is coming from DoxZoo, and both batches should be be with us early next week.
On Wednesday myself and Alex met with the Generator committee to thrash out details of the launch event on the 3rd. We have, let’s see *consults press release* live music from the tenebrous cabaret reimaginings of The Onion Club, the fevered highland acid of Haystack Monolith, longtime YNY launch event favourite Mickey Mallett and an exclusive performance intervention from the divine Lada Wilson. Plus I’ll be DJing, so things are starting to take shape.
I haven’t been listening to all that much music recently, mainly because I’ve been working on new Sypha Nadon music. I have, however, been assembling mix CDs based on the music that appears in the books of Bret Easton Ellis. I’ve so far only purchased one new album that has been released this year, the new Kylie, which I wasn’t crazy about tbh.
Oh, my vacation started yesterday. I have 9 days off (going back the Monday after next week). Don’t really have any big plans: I want to hit Providence tomorrow, maybe catch Isle of Dogs and go shopping one day, work on music, that kind of thing. I also printed out my third short story collection (LAST DARK RIDE) and right now I’m editing that. Hopefully it’ll be ready to start shopping around to publishers for the summer, but I almost wonder if maybe I should hold off till next year, till after HARLEM SMOKE is published… maybe it’ll be easier to find a place for this new book if I have that on my CV, ha ha.
Howdy Dennis,
Hope you had a good weekend. Did you go to that krump thing and if so, how was it? I didn’t know much about krumping so watched some videos & think such an event sounds fun. You get up to anything else?
In a cruel cruel health twist I’ve messed up my back, so can hardly walk. There’s an osteopath about 5 mins from our flat so I’m phoning them 1st thing tomorrow. Until them I’m fairly zonked on painkillers. We still managed to see some art in the GI though, which has been sweet: a weird semi-psychedelic performance in Tramway yesterday, an artist’s talk by Linder Sterling (she’s made a film and a flag for Glasgow Women’s Library) and some other stuff dotted around. And today we bumped into a guy I know who had an installation at the CCA wherein a Nirvana live show soundtrack has been played in one second blasts over the course of the last 72 hours, one second every 60 seconds. It’s in the gig space and the place is pitch black until the blast of sound is emitted then the empty stage is quickly lit as if a gig were on for the duration of the blast. I don’t know if I’m explaining it so well, but it was pretty striking.
My pick of today’s music would have to be Gosheven. It’s so nice to hear a guitar played in an original sounding way. I’ve been listening to a lot of his other stuff online and liking what I’ve heard too.
Any movement on the money you’re owed? I really hope that gets resolved and keeps a potentially ugly scene from getting uglier.
Hope the trip to Torino is excellent and PGL takes the festival by storm. Is that a train ride to there?
Best of Mondays to you!
Trimmed but growing in love,
Jamie
Hey Dennis,
I hope you’re all fully recovered from your jet lag, and have settled back into “normality”.
I saw that you’ve finished the script you were working on for your next film. How long did it take you to write from start to finish? Outside the obvious requirements of the format, you do approach your dramatic writing differently to your prose, and do you prefer one over the other? I find whenever I’ve had to write in the two formats, the focus of the writing is completely different. As much as I love the complete control you get writing prose, crafting the physical details of the environment as well as the emotional, there’s something about the detachment from the final product that comes with dramatic writing that really fascinates me. You can put in all the details about the scene and sculpt the language used, but the actual soul of the final visuals rests in a large part on how actors and directors interpret what you have written. Whereas prose is like an obedient puppet, scripts are like living canvases. Something I’ve always wanted to do is give the same script to a few directors, then step back and see how each of them visualise it.
I watched the interview you and Zac did about PGL at the International Film Festival Rotterdam the other day, and I really liked your explanation about the absence of a soundtrack in the film, other than what the characters can hear in their “reality”. In my opinion, by stripping the film back aurally in that way you’re creating a sense of realism, the viewer in a way becomes less of a detached audience member and more of a voyeur into the lives of the characters. They are interacting with the narrative at exactly the same level as its cast; like they are watching them from across the street rather than on a screen. It reminded me of a passage I read in Steve Malin’s biography of Depeche Mode where one of the band members is describing a car crash and in its aftermath how jarring reality is to what we have been in a way programmed to expect. Painful, life changing events portrayed in Films and TV are always accompanied by some emotive soundtrack, but the silence of reality is actually more powerful because you experience those emotions naked.
Did you find a moment to check out the alternative trailer soundtracks I wrote for LCTG and PGL? I really enjoyed working on them, and your thoughts would mean a lot to me. They’re in the “Soundtracks” playlist if you pop by my channel, it’s easier to find them there rather than wade through all the other videos (http://www.youtube.com/c/domlyne). Speaking of music, I received a nice message yesterday about The Red Devil Incident and how its music had helped them whilst they were going up. I always find it humbling when someone tells me that with regards to my music because in many ways The Red Devil Incident helped me when I was growing up by providing me with an outlet for my emotions and confusion about the world, and to hear that those outpourings helped someone else makes it all worthwhile, especially being told it now as I’m working on new music for the first time since 2012’s “Heart of Darkness” album. For someone like me, who is full of self-doubts, knowing that my work affects someone that deeply makes me realise that my work matters.
Sending you all my usual positive vibes, love and hugs to both you and Zac.
Dom
hey Dennis. So much going on here. I hope I’ll get to see you and George when you come to NYC. It’s actually been encouraging for me to hear about some of your tribulations – not that I’m glad about them, just that it shows me even you have these hassles…I guess it’s just a part of being an artist in this world. I would have assumed you wouldn’t have to go through that kind of nonsense, but I guess it happens to the best of us. So I’ve made a difficult decision, and I’m feeling relieved. I don’t think I’m going to work with the agent who invited me into her office. Such a good time we had, but she hasn’t gotten back to me, and I know her revisions (which I haven’t received) could take months. So meanwhile, my publisher wants to do it – and I’m going to go forward with him. Thanks so much for encouraging me to get this book out there, meant a lot to me a while back when you said that. So it’ll be published in the fall, or possibly early next year. This book has been around for years, had an agent on it originally who left town and the business, so I’ll finally be able to give that tribute to Sarah Kane and the subject of the artist in general. Even though it was written first, I feel this book goes deeper than my published one. It’ll be so good to have it out there! Thanks again for your encouragement, always.
Hey!
I had no idea grouper had a new single out! I love her sparse piano / vocals stuff, so that’s great to know now. Also, that CLN noise/drone guitar track is a pretty awesome find. It’s funny, one of my roommates who’s just starting to lear guitar recently got a pedal that has an abrasive ‘fuzzy’ sound, and my other, ‘high-all-the-time-spends-all-day-indoors’ roommate recently got bongos. So right now my house is a total clusterfuck of sounds that’s making noise music a lot harder to appreciate haha.
Jesus, that producer trouble sounds atrocious. Is this hoop jumping nonsense just a typical film thing, or does it happen in the lit world too? I just have a couple of friends who are hoping to make movies eventually, and I know they’re pretty freaked out about stuff like this. Anyways, please share once you get this all figured out, sending good luck your way. Did any good come out of the weekend, outside of all this producer trouble?